


Undertow

by theLiterator



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, American Civil War, M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-04
Updated: 2014-06-04
Packaged: 2018-02-03 10:12:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1740896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theLiterator/pseuds/theLiterator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He got off the bed and blinked until the room he was in registered properly. There weren’t clean clothes anywhere and he wasn’t wearing any shoes, but staying here wasn’t doing him any good, and besides, if, as he suspected, it was still 1864, the town would be in shambles.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>He should probably offer to help rebuild.</i>
</p>
<p><i>He </i>needed<i> to find Emily. Damon.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Undertow

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Wings of a Butterfly](https://archiveofourown.org/works/132387) by [Traxits](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Traxits/pseuds/Traxits). 



> This is an alternate sequel to the fic above, one where Emily couldn't send Jeremy back to the future.

_He heard Damon and Stefan both growling, Damon gathering Jeremy as close to him as he could, and then there was Emily, crying about something._

_Jeremy wanted to tell her to go ahead, to cast the spell as soon as he died. There was no need to make Damon or Stefan one kill him a second time. But he couldn't lift his head, couldn't put enough air into his lungs to make the words. He was dizzy, his head swimming, and he thought for a moment that he might be sick._

_Something velvety and black began to wrap around him, and he realized that he was dying.  
Dying slowly enough this time that he could really feel it. His body was shutting down, one part at a time, like the lights across an open room. He couldn't feel anything but cold. Cold and Damon's tongue against his skin._

_And then he felt nothing at all._

When he woke up, daylight sparkled through a lead-glass window, and the bed under him was straw and canvas.

He sat up with a gasp.

“It didn’t work,” he managed, and his voice was utterly gone; he was so thirsty it _burned_ and his head ached awfully.

Dying of blood-loss was perhaps his least favorite of all the ways he’d died thus far. “Emily?” he called, then, thinking she might have given them their rings already, he tried “Damon? Stefan?”

No one answered; he got off the bed and blinked until the room he was in registered properly. There weren’t clean clothes anywhere and he wasn’t wearing any shoes, but staying here wasn’t doing him any good, and besides, if, as he suspected, it was still 1864, the town would be in shambles.

He should probably offer to help rebuild.

He _needed_ to find Emily. Damon.

Damon had killed him. For some reason, _this_ felt like the first time. He thought of the way Damon’s eyes had flickered dark and inhuman before he’d latched onto Jeremy’s hand, and, “Damon!” he shouted, stumbling towards the door.

The door opened easily against his hand, and why shouldn’t it? and the woods were familiar enough around him that he took off running without thinking very much about where Mystic Falls was.

“Damon!” he screamed, over and over, between panting breaths, because _this_ Damon -- _**his**_ Damon-- had no idea that he couldn’t be killed, and that meant--

That meant--

“Slow down there, son,” a voice he recognized, Johnathan Gilbert, right, his _uncle_ because he was still in 1864, dear _God_ why hadn’t Emily done her spell? “You need to slow down.”

Jeremy stared at him, unseeing. “Damon?” he asked, but of course he hadn’t seen Damon; Jeremy knew first hand what a hungry new vampire would do to a man like Johnathan.

“Jeremy, nephew,” Johnathan said. “Please slow down. There’s a lot of blood; I need to examine you.”

“You think they got me?” Jeremy said vaguely. “I’m fine; I need to find Damon. He thinks I’m dead. I have to find him!”

“Jeremy, look at me! Damon’s dead. _Every_ Salvatore is dead. Now, come here; I’ve a room for you, and I can arrange for you to go back to Shreveport, _where you belong_ , shortly.”

Jeremy looked at him, really looked. “Does anyone in this town believe I’m eighteen?” he asked in a hoarse whisper. His voice had gone at some point.

“No,” the mayor said from behind him. “You’ve done our town a great service, and we’ve overlooked your age long enough. It’s time to send you _home_.”

“I tried,” Jeremy said, swallowing convulsively. He stared at his hand, noticing a scar there, livid and red, that he’d left.

His _hand_.

Emily.

“I need to go,” he said then. “There’s someone I have to find.”

Johnathan nodded, and Jeremy had a second to be relieved that they wouldn’t try to make him stay at home and be a good little boy like Elena was always trying before blackness claimed him again.

***  
Stefan seized his arm again, and Emily watched with wary eyes. Damon snarled at him, but he didn’t attack again-- not yet.

“Do you hear that?” he asked, and Damon shook his arm, trying to pull loose. “I think-- I think Emily’s _right_ , Damon. I think Jeremy’s fine, and he’s calling for you.”

“I’m imagining it,” Damon growled. “It’s a hallucination.”

“We need to go back to Mystic Falls. We need to get him; they might think--” Stefan sucked in a now unnecessary breath, then finished, all in a rush, “that he’s a vampire now too.”

Damon didn’t bother trying to fight off the grip; he took off again, this time in the direction of the far-distant calls that he still wasn’t entirely certain were real.

If they were though, and he _didn’t_ come running, he wouldn’t be able to bear it, letter or not. (He had to find the letter, he had to know it was all okay, had to know-- but he could still hear the echo of Jeremy’s voice, and he _had to know._ )

By the time they were close enough to Mystic Falls again for it to matter, Jeremy’s voice was long since silent, but Damon could _smell_ him. He hadn’t even known he’d be able to tell what Jeremy smelled like, but he knew beyond instinct that he could smell him now. Jeremy and the lake and Stefan’s blood; Damon’s. His own.

Even without that underlying scent like a beacon, all that blood would have been enough.

“He’s been moved,” he snarled, and his voice tasted wrong between his teeth. Right. Fangs.

“Or he moved himself,” Stefan offered.

It didn’t help. He would never forgive Stefan. He would never forgive _himself_ , and Stefan was always harder to forgive.

They arrived in the square just in time to watch Jeremy being dragged, limp and barefoot, into the Gilbert house.

Stefan tried to stop him, but nothing would.

_How **dare** they?_ he thought furiously. He stalked right up to the door and…  
Stopped.

His mouth opened silently, and then the mayor was warding him off and smirking. “Now, Damon, son,” he rambled, and Damon realized that he needed an invitation. No matter-- the mayor could invite him in.

“I want to see Jeremy,” he hissed. The mayor backed away slightly, but Damon caught his gaze.

Held it.

“You would be overjoyed for me to come and look in on Jeremy,” he prompted. He vaguely recalled Katherine trying this sort of thing and feeling idly perplexed by her intonation but of course he wouldn’t deny her anything.

“I would be… overjoyed if you came to look in on Jeremy,” the mayor repeated, pupils shrinking briefly to pinpricks. Damon smiled as he suddenly was able to traverse the threshold, and he shoved the mayor aside, hard. Not dead yet, he noted, but that was easily changed, dependent on Jeremy. He had a brief, vivid vision of what the town would look like if they had further harmed Jeremy.

As of right now, Damon was the only person permitted to kill him.

“Jeremy!” he called, moving down the hall. He was vaguely aware of Stefan, caught in the open doorway, calling his name, but he ignored that. “Jeremy, if you aren’t here, so help me--”

He heard the softest susurrus of breath, a brush of linen against linen, a low moan, and then the door was splintered and hanging wrong in its frame behind him and Jeremy was before him.

Damon froze before his fingers actually brushed flesh, not actually daring to touch lest this be some sort of grief-born madness, but then Jeremy opened his eyes to slits.

“Oh, good,” he said, voice rough and hoarse and causing Damon to cast about the room for water or tea or-- “You came back. I wasn’t sure where to look for you, otherwise. God, my _head_.”

Damon extended trembling fingers to brush a slight red mark at Jeremy’s temple. It felt very distinctly warmer that the surrounding skin, and he marvelled that he could feel the difference. He brushed his fingers further along Jeremy’s hairline, and then back, feeling the locks there as carefully as he had so many hours before; before he’d murdered Jeremy, who’d trusted him beyond all reason, in the trenches and then last night, when he _shouldn’t_ have, when--

“Jeremy,” he whispered, and Jeremy blinked, and smiled, and too quick to even track himself, Damon was on the bed and Jeremy was pulled in against his chest.

Damon sniffed lightly at his throat and then his hair, and it _was_ Jeremy, and then Jeremy collapsed against him, gripping hard at Damon’s shirt sleeves and pressing into his chest with surprising strength.

He let his hands drift along Jeremy’s back until they found good places to settle, one wrapped all the way around so his fingertips brushed Jeremy’s breastbone, the other at the base of his skull, cupping it or gripping it, he wasn’t sure, but it felt so good to just hold him.

“You…” Damon breathed, and Jeremy hummed softly in response. “How?”

“I have a ring,” Jeremy said, and Damon remembered seeing that, though he didn’t dare pull away enough to look at it again this moment. “But… but it didn’t work right. Is Emily okay? Because… it was supposed to fix everything.”

“What?” Damon snapped, and his grip went too-tight for a breath, but Jeremy didn’t make a sound of protest, and he didn’t struggle, which perversely settled Damon faster than anything else had thus far.

“I’m not from here,” Jeremy said, and Damon thought the way he was muffling the words against his shoulder had to be deliberate, so he used the grip he had on the back of Jeremy’s neck to pry him away. When Damon caught his gaze, though, sense fled, because _Jeremy_ was there, and breathing, and he’d spent _hours_ convinced he would never see this again, and something in him broke free, some barrier he’d been struggling against even as he’d _tried_ to court Katherine (so difficult, with Jeremy always there,) breaking down so that he bent and captured Jeremy’s lips in a tender kiss that tasted nothing at all like blood.

Jeremy kissed him back, and that surprised him, but he didn’t want to waste the opportunity he’d forged for himself by pulling away and asking-- asking what?

Instead, he licked against Jeremy’s mouth and when Jeremy moaned and shifted and parted his lips, he sighed and used his grip on Jeremy’s head to angle him properly, and…

Jeremy pulled away with a gasp. His pupils were huge and dark and he licked his lips several times before speaking.

“I can’t… you aren’t ready yet,” he said, stuttering a little and concluding by wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He licked his lips again immediately after, and he pulled away a little more, and Damon let him, stopping him only once Jeremy threatened to go far enough that Damon couldn’t touch him again.

Almost half a day. Damon thought he could be excused for needing this reassurance for a while yet.

“Me?” he asked, once he’d parsed Jeremy’s meaning. “You’re not even _eighteen_. I’m a vampire, now, and older besides.”

“Yeah, well, you also think you’re in love with Katherine and you’re from a crazy century where boys can’t kiss boys because of … I don’t know. Hell? Whatever.”

Damon stared at Jeremy. Realized he was serious. “I believe that ship has sailed,” he said quietly, fighting back a smile.

Jeremy snorted. “Damn right it has. She was a total bitch who was only ever using you.”

Damon resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Katherine was _never_ the issue. But I’m a vampire now; I’m fairly certain Hell is a given at this point.”

Jeremy shook his head. “Liar. Katherine was totally the issue and you know it.”

“Maybe just a bit.”

“So no kissing, at least not until you’re sure.”

Damon laughed, because he would never _not_ be sure, but he’d go along with whatever Jeremy wanted, because Jeremy was _here_ and _alive_.

“Is someone calling my name?” Jeremy asked after a long, comfortable silence during which Damon had realized they were holding hands and tried not to blush like a girl who’d never even _spoken_ to a boy.

“Stefan,” he said shortly.

“Ah,” Jeremy said. “I…” he made a show of peering around the room. “I guess they didn’t have time to set out clothes or anything. He then looked down at his feet, and Damon followed his gaze and watched him wiggle his toes.

“You’re barefoot,” he said.

“Took off my shoes,” he agreed. “You know, before. Damon, you should know, I--”

Emily appeared in the doorway, only to be brushed aside by Stefan, who dropped to his knees in front of Damon.

It was that gesture of complete submission that saved him, Damon thought through the haze that had abruptly consumed him. His fangs were down and he was pinning Stefan to the floor, one handed. The other hand still clung to Jeremy’s, like a lifeline. He forced himself to draw away from Stefan, to look up at Jeremy whose brows were furrowed.

“Please don’t kill him, Damon,” he said gently once Damon’s attention was fully on him. “You’ll regret it. I know it’s hard to believe right now, and you’re angry and you feel really betrayed, but he’s your _brother_ , and you can’t kill him.”

He frowned and stood up, keeping his far less vulnerable body between Jeremy and the door-- the rest of the room-- Stefan.

“So,” Jeremy said. “I expect the private conversation I need to have with Emily--”

The growl that built up in Damon’s throat frightened even him.

“Thought so. In that case, where are we going? What’s the plan? We can’t stay here; they’ll know what you are.”

“We go to Shreveport,” Damon said, automatically. That had always been the plan; turn, send Jeremy home, follow Katherine. Two out of three was better than his usual success rate, to be fair.

“Shreveport?” Jeremy asked. “But why? I think we should try for further west; but not California. We’ve got another year of war; well, a little longer. But we should be able to avoid the worst of it if we head to… Texas? New Mexico? No, definitely not Texas….” he frowned. “Maybe Colorado? Does your dad have property out west anywhere? I guess with the two of you, we won’t have to worry too much about people getting violent during the Reconstruction, will we?”

Damon _heard_ the stream of words, and he knew they had some meaning, but he couldn’t quite catch it.

“We’re going to Shreveport,” he said again, firmer this time, tightening his grip on Jeremy’s hand for a moment to reinforce it.

“Why?” Jeremy asked, and Damon _had_ to turn then, to see that familiar frown of confusion. Damon didn’t have a kepi to give him, to make him grin and bat at him; all he had now were his fangs. Yes; it was best to go to Shreveport. Maybe in a few years, when Jeremy wasn’t so completely and painfully _young_ anymore, Damon would come back, and then he would turn him, and Stefan would have Katherine, and…

That might be a workable plan. He would have to think on it.

“I’m taking you home, Jer,” he said.

Jeremy shook his hair out of his eyes, frown still decidedly in place. “Damon, I’m not actually from Shreveport.”

Damon opened his mouth. Stared. Shut it. “Are you truly a Gilbert?” he asked, finally.

Not that he particularly cared, but. He wondered if what Jeremy had been running from had been so bad that he’d lied about _all_ of it.

Wondered, not for the first time, what Jeremy had been running from. not that he could mind the fact that Jeremy had run right into his trench at all, but still.

“Yes; I’m… There isn’t a way for me to truly convince you, but… I’m actually his descendant.”

“Descendant. As in…” Damon shook his head. “No.”

“I’m from the future.”

Damon thought about the family he’d been so certain Jeremy had back in Shreveport, the sister who looked enough like Katherine to startle him sometimes, and how much he’d been looking forward to delivering Jeremy back to them, to doing something right for once.

He thought about how he’d sort of, vaguely, hoped to make Jeremy like him, some day.

He thought about how sick Jeremy must be.

“Damon!” Jeremy said, closing what little distance remained between them. “You got all... vampiric. What’s wrong?”

“Stefan,” Damon said, casting about behind him. He needed his brother now.

“It’s okay, Damon,” Stefan said. “We can protect him, now.”

But they couldn’t turn him, could they?

“It’s true,” Emily said quietly from across the room. “Calm yourself, Damon, or you’ll kill him again. It’s true.”

Damon dropped Jeremy’s hand, instead running his hands up and down Jeremy’s shoulders, as if he might disappear or suddenly spook. When Jeremy just _let_ him, same as before, he took hold of the back of his neck again and dragged his head down so their foreheads were pressed together. Jeremy smelled, still, of old blood and the woods and under it all himself.

“How?” he asked, willing to believe. _Wanting_ to believe. Even if Jeremy _was_ mad, it was a calm, innocuous sort of madness, so it wouldn’t matter.

“Magic,” Jeremy said with a cocky smile that reached his eyes. “How else?”


End file.
